A cableway with a single lift is known which comprises a plurality of endless spliced together conveying rope loops or strands. This conveying rope is guided over a rope disk in a valley station and also in a mountain station.
A plurality of conveying means, i.e. a means for carrying an item or person to or from the valley station from or to the mountain station, such as a simple seat or a gondola, are attached rigidly or are couplable to these rope loops.
In the known apparatus the conveying means have seats for four to eight persons who are sitting and up to ten persons who are standing. The load capacity of the individual conveying means is limited by the diameter of the lift cable and/or by the maximum cross sectional load capacity determined by the diameter of the lift cable.
Since the specification of the diameter of the cable can not be arbitrarily increased and at this time is in the range from 50 mm to 60 mm, the cross sectional load capacity and thus the capacity of the conveying means has an upper limit.
To increase the capacity of the lift rope apparatus in spite of the cable-diameter limits as is described in European Pat. No. 93 680 two parallel endless spliced lift cable loops are provided to which the individual conveying means are jointly coupled. Thus considering the limit to the maximum cross sectional load capacity of one of the conveying cable loops the capacity of this lift rope apparatus or cable way is nearly double that described above.
In this known apparatus both conveying cable loops are driven separately from each other. However since the conveying means are clamped jointly to both conveying rope loops to avoid loads due to swinging of these attached devices it is necessary to move both cable loops with respect to each other simultaneously.
To achieve this simultaneous operation monitoring and control is required. The control means can be mechanical or electrical.
Furthermore both drive systems are couplable with each other for the case of braking or slowing and the simultaneity of motion of both rope loops must also be guaranteed with emergency drives. To feed both rope loops simultaneously for the case of joint operation high construction costs are incurred.